19 June 2005; 04:15 AM
up late, thinking, reading
stayed up too late reading "the namesake" by jhumpa lahiri. i haven't quite finished but it started to feel like when you try to eat a bag of chips in one sitting because they're so good and there's just a few left anyway... but then you realize you didn't enjoy the last third of the bag. i guess i was on my way to sleepily gorging myself on the end of the book.
not feeling depressed, but feeling aimless. i'm in a kind of unfamiliar place with myself. i'm dissatisfied, and acutely aware of the things in my life that aren't working for me right now. but - and this is the part that is out of the ordinary - i don't have any big fantasy about what huge change will make it better. i've all but given up on my idea of getting a degree or going to a good school. used to be that "going to school" was my big plan. i just don't feel excited about it anymore and it doesn't seem very feasible anyway, now that i know that i would have to work to support myself through it too. after experiencing a semester of trying to take two classes at city college while also working full time, it just seems like hell.
i feel really apalled at my own lack of interest in finding some ambitious and adventurous way to apply myself to this world. i used to be able to see possibility everywhere.. maybe this is age? i can't seem to motivate to do any of the things i used to like and feel excited about. maybe i *am* depressed and it's just not registering that way since i'm not wracked with despair (my usual signifier).
sometimes staying up late helps restore wonder. but i just feel lonely. i've been feeling really lonely all day. i dislike the lingering pressures of past friendships that i held in SF... the continuation of contact with some people only occurs by seeing remnants of them online, in their journals, on mailing lists. they see me in those ways too. so much occurs in the mind, and whole relationships are removed from reality and relegated to a strange mental prison of perception and distance and the meaning of all that. i feel really stuck in it, and it makes me long for the times in new york when i was just myself, removed from that complexity and inserted cleanly into an actual life, not a pretend one filled in by my imagination, and sometimes, paranoia.
missing omega, omega friends, community. those few intense moments at dawn or late night with noah. presiding over staff dining at 2am, holding court in the way i can only when i'm at my most joyous. my humble cabin, my painting. i painted so much that summer, drew pictures, and wrote and recited so much poetry.
having experiences like living at omega, then leaving, then searching for any kind of beauty which might also be worthwhile.. that's hard. it's the curse of having led a really interesting and pretty awesome life and still being not even 30. what the fuck other things will i do, and how will i maintain my sense of wonder in life? it's so difficult to feel that sense of care and abundance as adult concerns start to grow heavier. debt and the need for health insurance. the desire to start something (a business?), buy a house, make money for yourself. these things build up and it's hard to keep them from whittling away at wonder and at the feeling of abundance and possibility.
it reminds me of this quote that chris sent to me before i returned to omega the second time (destined to meet oliver just afterward, no idea what was in store):
you cannot stay on the summit forever. you have to come down again, so why bother in the first place? just this: what is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. one climbs and one sees; one descends and one sees no longer, but one has seen. there is an art of conducting oneself in the lower region by the memory of what one saw higher up. when one know longer sees, one can at least still know.
